The inventive concept described herein pertains to mechanisms by which user interaction with a computer system controls the presentation of display data, where such interaction is interpreted and used by a data processor or computer architecture having system level elements of computation or data processing techniques prior to use with or in a specific display system.
Editing graphical data by a user's interaction with data processing equipment has found wide application for decades. Manipulating data through graphical interfaces is intuitive for humans and thus preferred in such fields as design and analysis. However, as the amount of data being displayed becomes large, other mechanisms must be employed so that a human user may visualize the data at the desired level of detail. This poses challenges when the user also desires to visualize the entirety of the data, as well as the desired level of detail.
FIGS. 1A-1B illustrate strategies that have been developed to visualize graphical data in both global and detailed views. FIG. 1A illustrates a magnified, or zoomed-in view 110 of data presented in a separate world view 120 depicting the entirety of the data of interest to a user. FIG. 1B illustrates a zoomed-in view 130 of a region highlighted in a separate regional view 140. The skilled artisan will readily recognize the challenges posed when attempting to edit graphical data across a large region under the constraints of the separate-view paradigms illustrated in FIGS. 1A-1B.